correspondents and their record officer. England
will one day know about her regiments; her stubborn regiments of the
line, her county regiments, who have won the admiration of all the
crack regiments, whether English or Scots.

"When that gas came along," said one Canadian, who expressed the
Canadian spirit, "we knew the Boches were springing a new one on
us. You know how it is if a man is hit in the face by a cloud of smoke
when he is going into a burning building to get somebody out. He
draws back--and then he goes in. We went in. We charged--well, it
was the way we felt about it. We wanted to get at them and we were
boiling mad over such a dastardly kind of attack."

Higher authorities than any civilian have testified to how that charge
helped, if it did not save, the situation. And then at Givenchy--straight
work into the enemy's trenches under the guns. Canada is part of the
British Empire and a precious part; but the Canadians, all imperial
politics aside, fought their way into the affection of the British army, if
they did not already possess it. They made the Rocky Mountains
seem more majestic and the Thousand Islands more lovely.

If there are some people in the United States busy with their own
affairs who look on the Canadians as living up north somewhere
toward the Arctic Circle and not very numerous, that old criterion of
worth which discovers in the glare of battle's publicity merit which
already existed has given to the name Canadian a glory which can be
appreciated only with the perspective of time. The Civil War left us a
martial tradition; they have won theirs. Some day a few of their neutral
neighbours who fought by their side will be joining in their army
reunions and remarking, "Wasn't that mud in Flanders------" etc.

My thanks to the Canadians for being at the front. They brought me
back to the plains and the North-West, and they showed the
Germans on some occasions what a blizzard is like when expressed
in bullets instead of in snowflakes, by men who know how to shoot. I
had continental pride in them. They had the dry, pungent philosophy
and the indomitable optimism which the air of the plains and the St.
Lawrence valley seems to develop. They were not afraid to be a little
emotional and sentimental. There is room for that sort of thing
between Vancouver and Halifax. They had been in some "tough
scraps" which they saw clear-eyed, as they would see a boxing-
match or a spill from a canoe into